This thread is for the matters concerning the long, sordid and frequently criminal history of the Hillbillary Clintons:===================WSJThe Clintons' Terror PardonsBy DEBRA BURLINGAMEFebruary 12, 2008; Page A17

It was nearly 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 1982. Two officers on New York Police Department's elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. Lying amid the carnage was Police Officer Rocco Pascarella, his lower leg blasted off.

"He was ripped up like someone took a box cutter and shredded his face," remembered Detective Anthony Senft, one of the bomb-squad officers who answered the call 25 years ago. "We really didn't even know that he was a uniformed man until we found his weapon, that's how badly he was injured."

About 20 minutes later, Mr. Senft and his partner, Richard Pastorella, were blown 15 feet in the air as they knelt in protective gear to defuse another bomb. Detective Senft was blinded in one eye, his facial bones shattered, his hip severely fractured. Mr. Pastorella was blinded in both eyes and lost all the fingers of his right hand. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

The perpetrators were members of Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN (the Spanish acronym), a clandestine terrorist group devoted to bringing about independence for Puerto Rico through violent means. Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation. The most gruesome attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush, the explosion decapitated one of the four people killed and injured another 60.

FALN bragged about the bloodbath, calling the victims "reactionary corporate executives" and threatening: "You have unleashed a storm from which you comfortable Yankees can't escape." By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.

On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he "will not rest until justice is done." Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members of FALN. What began as a simple paragraph on the AP wire exploded into a major controversy.

Mr. Clinton justified the clemencies by asserting that the sentences were disproportionate to the crimes. None of the petitioners, he stated, had been directly involved in crimes that caused bodily harm to anyone. "For me," the president concluded, "the question, therefore, was whether their continuing incarceration served any meaningful purpose."

His comments, including the astonishing claim that the FALN prisoners were being unfairly punished because of "guilt by association," were widely condemned as a concession to terrorists. Further, they were seen as an outrageous slap in the face of the victims and a bitter betrayal of the cops and federal law enforcement officers who had put their lives on the line to protect the public and who had invested years of their careers to put these people behind bars. The U.S. Sentencing Commission affirmed a pre-existing Justice Department assessment that the sentences, ranging from 30 to 90 years, were "in line with sentences imposed in other cases for similar terrorist activity."

The prisoners were convicted on a variety of charges that included conspiracy, sedition, violation of the Hobbes Act (extortion by force, violence or fear), armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons and explosives -- including large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive, dynamite and huge caches of ammunition. Mr. Clinton's action was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney offices that prosecuted the cases and the victims whose lives had been shattered. In contravention of standard procedures, none of these agencies, victims or families of victims were consulted or notified prior to the president's announcement.

"I know the chilling evidence that convicted the petitioners," wrote Deborah Devaney, one of the federal prosecutors who spent years on the cases. "The conspirators made every effort to murder and maim. . . . A few dedicated federal agents are the only people who stood in their way."

Observed Judge George Layton, who sentenced four FALN defendants for their conspiracy to use military-grade explosives to break an FALN leader from Ft. Leavenworth Penitentiary and detonate bombs at other public buildings, "[T]his case . . . represents one of the finest examples of preventive law enforcement that has ever come to this court's attention in the 20-odd years it has been a judge and in the 20 years before that as a practicing lawyer in criminal cases."

The FBI cracked the cases with the discovery of an FALN safe house and bomb factory. Video surveillance showed two of those on the clemency list firing weapons and building bombs intended for an imminent attack at a U.S. military installation. FBI agents obtained a warrant and entered the premises, surreptitiously disarming the bombs whose components bore the unmistakable FALN signature. They found 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, weapons, disguises, false IDs and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

A total of six safe houses were ultimately uncovered. Seven hundred hours of surveillance video were recorded, resulting in a mountain of evidence connecting the 16 prisoners to multiple FALN operations past and present.

Federal law enforcement agencies considered these individuals so dangerous, extraordinary security precautions were taken at their numerous trials. Courthouse elevators were restricted and no one, including the court officers, was permitted to carry a firearm in the courtroom.

Given all this, why would Bill Clinton, who had ignored the 3,226 clemency petitions that had piled up on his desk over the years, suddenly reach into the stack and pluck out these 16 meritless cases? (The New York Times ran a column with the headline, "Bill's Little Gift.")

Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the midst of her state-wide "listening tour" in anticipation of her run for the U.S. Senate in New York, a state which included 1.3 million Hispanics. Three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- Luis V. Gutierrez (D., Ill.), Jose E. Serrano, (D., N.Y.) and Nydia M. Velazquez, (D., N.Y.) -- along with local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights advocates, had been agitating for years on behalf of the FALN cases directly to the White House and first lady.

Initial reports stated that Mrs. Clinton supported the clemencies, but when public reaction went negative she changed course, issuing a short statement three weeks after the clemencies were announced. The prisoners' delay in refusing to renounce violence "speaks volumes," she said.

The Clintons were caught in an awkward predicament of their own making. The president had ignored federal guidelines for commutation of sentences, including the most fundamental: The prisoners hadn't actually asked for clemency.

To push the deal through, signed statements renouncing violence and expressing remorse were required by the Justice Department. The FALN prisoners, surely relishing the embarrassment and discomfiture they were causing the president and his wife, had previously declined to accept these conditions. Committed and unrepentant militants who did not accept the authority of the United States, they refused to apologize for activities they were proud of in order to obtain a clemency they never requested.

So desperate was the White House to get the deal finalized and out of the news, an unprecedented 16-way conference call was set up for the "petitioners" who were locked up in 11 different federal facilities so that they could strategize a response to the president's offer. Two eventually refused to renounce their cause, preferring to serve out their lengthy sentences rather than follow the White House script.

Mr. Clinton's fecklessness in the handling of these cases was demonstrated by the fact that none of the prisoners were required, as a standard condition of release, to cooperate in ongoing investigations of countless unsolved FALN bombing cases and other crimes. Mrs. Clinton's so-called disagreement with her husband on the matter made no mention of that fact. The risk of demanding such a requirement, of course, was that the prisoners might have proudly implicated themselves, causing the entire enterprise to implode, with maximum damage to the president and potentially sinking Hillary Clinton's Senate chances.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rican politicians in New York who'd been crowing to their constituents about the impending release of these "freedom fighters" were enraged and insulted at Hillary Clinton's withdrawal of support. "It was a horrible blunder," said State Sen. Olga A. Mendez. "She needs to learn the rules."

The first lady called her failure to consult the Puerto Rican political establishment before assessing the entire issue a mistake "that will never happen again" -- even as the cops who had been maimed and disfigured by FALN operations continued to be ignored. Tom and Joe Connor, two brothers who were little boys when their 33-year-old father, Frank, was killed in the Fraunces Tavern attack, were dumbstruck to learn that White House staffers referred to the FALN militants as "political prisoners" and were planning a meeting with their children to humanize their plight.

Members of Congress viewed the clemencies as a dangerous abuse of presidential power that could not go unchallenged. Resolutions condemning the president's action were passed with a vote of 95-2 in the Senate, 311-41 in the House. It was the most they could do; the president's pardon power, conferred by the Constitution, is absolute. The House launched an investigation, subpoenaing records from the White House and Justice in an effort to determine whether proper procedure had been followed. President Clinton promptly invoked executive privilege, putting Justice Department lawyers in the impossible position of admitting that they had sent the White House a recommendation on the issue, but barred from disclosing what it was.

Twenty-four hours before a scheduled Senate committee hearing, the DOJ withheld the FBI's written statement about the history of the FALN and an assessment of its current terrorist capability. "They pulled the plug on us," said an unnamed FBI official in a news report, referring to the Justice Department decision to prevent FBI testimony.

The investigation revealed that the White House was driving the effort to release the prisoners, rather than the other way around. White House aides created talking points and strategies for a public campaign on the prisoners' behalf included asking prominent individuals for letters supporting clemency.

Jeffrey Farrow, a key adviser on the White House Interagency Working Group for Puerto Rico recommended meetings with the president and the three leading members of Congressional Hispanic Caucus who were pushing the effort, stating in a March 6, 1999 email, "This is Gutierrez's [sic] top priority as well as of high constituent importance to Serrano and Velazquez." The next day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste sent an email to White House Counsel Charles Ruff, who was handling the clemency issue, supporting Mr. Farrow's view, saying, "Chuck -- Jeff's right about this -- very hot issue." Another adviser in the Working Group, Mayra Martinez-Fernandez, noted that releasing the prisoners would be "fairly easy to accomplish and will have a positive impact among strategic communities in the U.S. (read, voters)."

And there you have it. Votes.

While the pardon scandals that marked Bill and Hillary Clinton's final days in office are remembered as transactions involving cronies, criminals and campaign contributors, the FALN clemencies of 1999 should be remembered in the context of the increasing threat of domestic and transnational terrorism that was ramping up during the Clinton years of alleged peace and prosperity. To wit, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1995 "Bojinka" conspiracy to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing, Osama bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 "Declarations of War" on America, the 1998 East African embassy bombings, the 2000 USS Sullivans bombing attempt, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and the 2000 Millennium bombing plot.

It was within that context that the FBI gave its position on the FALN clemencies -- which the White House succeeded in keeping out of news coverage but ultimately failed to suppress -- stating that "the release of these individuals will psychologically and operationally enhance the ongoing violent and criminal activities of terrorist groups, not only in Puerto Rico, but throughout the world." The White House spun the clemencies as a sign of the president's universal commitment to "peace and reconciliation" just one year after Osama bin Laden told his followers that the United States is a "paper tiger" that can be attacked with impunity.

It would be a mistake to dismiss as "old news" the story of how and why these terrorists were released in light of the fact that it took place during the precise period when Bill Clinton now claims he was avidly engaged, even "obsessed," with efforts to protect the public from clandestine terrorist attacks. If Bill and Hillary Clinton were willing to pander to the demands of local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights activists defending bomb-makers convicted of seditious conspiracy, how might they stand up to pressure from other interest groups working in less obvious ways against U.S. interests in a post-9/11 world?

Radical Islamists are a sophisticated and determined enemy who understand that violence alone will not achieve their goals. Islamist front groups, representing themselves as rights organizations, are attempting to get a foothold here as they have already in parts of Western Europe by deftly exploiting ethnic and racial politics, agitating under the banner of civil liberties even as they are clamoring for the imposition of special Shariah law privileges in the public domain. They believe that the road to America's ultimate defeat is through the back door of policy and law and they are aggressively using money, influence and retail politics to achieve their goal.

On the campaign trail, the Clintons like to say that Bill is merely supportive and enthusiastic, "just like all the other candidates' spouses." Nothing could be further from the truth. Returning Bill and Hillary Clinton to the White House would present the country with the unprecedented situation of a former and current president simultaneously occupying the White House, the practical implications of which have yet to be fully explored.

The FALN clemencies provide a disturbing example of how the abuse or misuse of presidential prerogative, under the guise of policy, can be put in service of the personal and private activities of the president's spouse -- and beyond the reach of meaningful congressional oversight.

Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.

I believe without hesitation that the Clintons would have Obama assasinated if they thought they would get away with it.And then Hillary would get on her soapbox and accuse Repbulicans of, "why, they are even accusing us of murder!"

The Clintons can fire all their help but eventually it will dawn on them that *they* are being rejected. This is a prime example of how they think *everything* can be managed. (Extrapolate that to national and world affairs.)

The crats (and the country) are realizing Obama is more likely to beat McCain then the grifter couple. As a result they are fleeing like sheep to a new and better point man. They would vote for a rhinosaorus if it could "beat the Republicans".

10 years ago I remember talking to a lady I worked with and I exasperatingly exclaimed how I could not fathom how the Crats can support sleazy Clinton characters and reward them with the highest office in the world. Her answerwas right on - "well that's because that's all they [Democrats] have".

Not anymore.

It's a long time till the convention. If OB can stay out of trouble he's looking good.Don't count on the Clinton's to show real humility. They'll pretend and she'll put on that phoney glued on smile but.....

His and Her FinancesFebruary 22, 2008; Page A14Stonewalling and secrecy helped Bill and Hillary Clinton win the White House without a thorough enough vetting in 1992. Now they're trying to do it again, this time by not disclosing either their income tax returns or the donor list for the Clinton Foundation.

All of this has become the target of greater attention since Mrs. Clinton loaned her struggling campaign $5 million last month. She waited until after the crucial Super Tuesday voting to disclose this news, and initially described the loan as "my money." Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson then clarified that the cash had come from Mrs. Clinton's 50% "share" of the couple's joint resources.

Is America a great country or what? Only seven years ago the Clintons were swimming in legal bills. They've since cashed in on their celebrity to pay off a $2 million mortgage on their Washington D.C. home, and are now able to lend $5 million to Mrs. Clinton's campaign. The Senator has had her own success, earning more than $5 million for her "Living History" memoir. But the real income source has been the former President, who has been giving $450,000 speeches, and in general parlaying his political fame into personal riches.

Mr. Clinton is now trying to unwind a business relationship with billionaire pal Ron Burkle. This deal made him a partner -- along with the ruler of Dubai -- in the Yucaipa Global Fund. How much did Mr. Clinton earn from a partnership with men whose business interests might be affected by the policy actions of a President Hillary Clinton? The Clintons and their accountant know, but the public doesn't.

Mr. Clinton has also been raising cash for the Clinton Foundation, which funds his charitable activities and Presidential library. The foundation has raised more than $500 million, but Mr. Clinton has refused to release a donor list.

What we do know is that Mr. Clinton has allowed donors to use his influence to advance their business interests. That was the case with Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier, who won a huge mining concession in Kazakhstan after Mr. Clinton flew all the way to Almaty to introduce him to President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Bloomberg reported this week that Mr. Clinton has also been a frequent flyer on Mr. Giustra's corporate jet.

Mr. Giustra later donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation and has pledged $100 million more. As the New York Times has reported, Mr. Clinton used his trip to praise Mr. Nazarbayev's bid to head the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, even as Senator Clinton was slamming the country's record on corruption and elections. If Mr. Clinton's personal business is going to affect U.S. foreign policy, he ought to tell the world who his benefactors are.

We've seen this nondisclosure before. During the 1992 campaign, the Clintons claimed to be coming clean by releasing their tax returns from 1980 forward. But they steadfastly refused to release their returns for prior years, and only later did we learn that 1978 and 1979 were the tax years when Mrs. Clinton reported her 10,000% cattle-futures trading profit. Remember Red Bone and Jim Blair, and how she claimed she had made the investment on her own after reading the Wall Street Journal? For that matter, remember the other characters who provided cash for the Clintons in return for nights in the Lincoln Bedroom, among other things?

Senator Clinton has said she'll make her tax returns public only if she wins the Democratic nomination. Mr. Clinton has said he'll disclose his future donors only if she is President. Once again they're trying to block disclosure until it's too late to inform the judgment of voters.

Mr. Obama has released his tax returns and has suggested Mrs. Clinton do the same because "the American people deserve to know where you get your income from." If the Clintons continue to keep his and her finances under wraps, the public would be wise, given their history, to assume they have something to hide.

Being a politician on the national stage has certainly become a way to glorius riches hasn't it?

They all cash in after they leave. I remember when Reagan went to Japan to speak for 2 million and how the crats tried to turn that into a scandal. That's pennies compared to the riches these people get giving speeches, working as "lobbyists", consultants, and token positions in companies that need political connections.

I still wonder what the inside deal is with Chelsea and the hedge fund.

Have you ever been to a government office to pick up a document -- your driver's license, say -- only to be sent to another window, where the clerk sends you to another window, where a clerk sends you back to the first to start all over again?

That's what it feels like these days asking Bill and Hillary Clinton about their White House records. Last weekend, USA Today reported that it had finally received some records from the Clinton Presidency four years after making a Freedom of Information Act request. Except that hundreds of pages pertaining to the handling of Bill Clinton's 140 last-minute pardons had been redacted or withheld by the helpful folks at the National Archives.

The Archives told USA Today that they had referred all the excluded and redacted material to lawyer Bruce Lindsey, the longtime keeper of Clinton secrets who's responsible for vetting the records. But Mr. Lindsey refused; apparently he doesn't want to second-guess the Archives. The Clintons themselves, meanwhile, say that everything is in the hands of the Archives and Mr. Lindsey, even though the Archives are acting pursuant to Bill's personal instructions, and those instructions include a provision to allow Mr. Lindsay to second-guess the Archivists.

If you can't easily follow all that, maybe that's the idea.

Last October, NBC's Tim Russert asked Hillary Clinton about the White House records at a debate. Her answer: "The Archives is moving as rapidly as the Archives moves." So, while she is "fully in favor" of releasing the records from her time in the White House, those bureaucrats were holding things up. As for the records that her husband had requested remain under seal until 2012, as permitted under the law, "That's not my decision to make," she said. In other words, you'll have to ask at Window 14.

Then in February, Mr. Russert asked again, noting that the Archives had actually turned over 10,000 pages of documents about Hillary Clinton's schedule as first lady to the Clintons for their review, and they were sitting on them. Her answer was again, in effect, "It's not my job."

Those scheduling records are now due to be made public later this month, but the pardon records are stuck in limbo. The Archivists say that it's up to Mr. Lindsey, but also that Mr. Lindsey won't look at them. The Clintons say its up to the Archives, and Mr. Lindsey -- well, his window is closed, we guess.

Then there's the question of the donors to the Clinton Foundation, which raised more than $135 million last year alone. Hillary Clinton says she's in favor of a law that would require disclosure of the donors to Presidential foundations. So what about voluntarily disclosing while a candidate what she favors making mandatory after she's elected? "Well, you'll have to ask them," she said back in September, referring to the foundation. Who runs the foundation? Why, Bruce Lindsey, of course.

So, has Mrs. Clinton suggested that Mr. Lindsey and Bill do the disclosure that she claims to favor? "Well," she told Mr. Russert in New Hampshire in September, "I don't talk about my private conversations with my husband." In other words, this window is now also closed -- at least until the election is over.

Now that Hillary Clinton has been nailed in an outright fabrication of her role in Bosnia, it is time to remind ourselves of another, even more galling fantasy that Hillary tried to sell the voters.

After 9/11, Hillary had a problem. New Yorkers were desperately focused on their own needs for protection and they were saddled with a Senator who was not one of them -- an Arkansasn or was it a Chicagoan?

Interviewed on the "Today" show one week after 9/11, she spun an elaborate yarn. The kindest thing we could say was that it was a fantasy. Or a fabrication. She said that Chelsea was jogging around the World Trade Center on 9/11 and happened to duck into a coffee shop when the airplanes hit. She said that this move saved Chelsea's life. But Chelsea told Talk magazine that she was in a friend's apartment four miles from ground zero when the first plane hit. Her friend called her, waking her up, and told her to turn on the TV. On television, she saw the second plane hit, disproving Hillary's claim that "she heard the plane hit. She heard it. She did."

So why did Hillary make up the story about Chelsea? Most likely to was because her co-senator (and implicit rival for the voter's affection), a real New Yorker Chuck Schumer spoke of his daughter, who attended Stuyvesant High School (Dick's alma mater) located next to the TRade Center, being at real risk on 9/11. Hillary needed to make herself part of the scene.

She invented the entire story on national television, the "Today" show, and didn't blink an eye. Her fabrication on the "Today" show was no unique foray. It is her standard M.O.. It gives us pause in evaluating all of her stories and calls into question her entire credibility.

The USA Today/Gallup survey clearly explains why Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is losing. Asked whether the candidates were “honest and trustworthy,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., won with 67 percent, with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right behind him at 63. Hillary scored only 44 percent, the lowest rating for any candidate for any attribute in the poll.

Hillary simply cannot tell the truth. Here's her scorecard:

Admitted Lies

Chelsea was jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (She was in bed watching it on TV.)

Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (She admitted she was wrong. He climbed Mt. Everest five years after her birth.)

She was under sniper fire in Bosnia. (A girl presented her with flowers at the foot of the ramp.)

She learned in The Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the futures market. (It didn't cover the market back then.)

Whoppers She Won't Admit

She didn't know about the FALN pardons.

She didn't know that her brothers were being paid to get pardons that Clinton granted.

Taking the White House gifts was a clerical error.

She didn't know that her staff would fire the travel office staff after she told them to do so.

She didn't know that the Peter Paul fundraiser in Hollywood in 2000 cost $700,000 more than she reported it had.

She opposed NAFTA at the time.

She was instrumental in the Irish peace process.

She urged Bill to intervene in Rwanda.

She played a role in the '90s economic recovery.

The billing records showed up on their own.

She thought Bill was innocent when the Monica scandal broke.

She was always a Yankees fan.

She had nothing to do with the New Square Hasidic pardons (after they voted for her 1,400-12 and she attended a meeting at the White House about the pardons).

She negotiated for the release of refugees in Macedonia (who were released the day before she got there).

With a record like that, is it any wonder that we suspect her of being less than honest and straightforward?

Why has McCain jumped out to a nine-point lead over Obama and a seven-point lead over Hillary in the latest Rasmussen poll?

OK, Obama has had the Rev. Wright mess on his hands. And Hillary has come in for her share of negatives, like the Richardson endorsement of Obama and the denouement of her latest lie — that she endured sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia. But why has McCain gained so much in so short a period of time? Most polls had the general election tied two weeks ago.

McCain's virtues require a contrast in order to stand out. His strength, integrity, solidity and dependability all are essentially passive virtues, which shine only by contrast with others.

Now that Obama and Hillary are offering images that are much weaker, less honest, and less solid and dependable, good old John McCain looks that much better as he tours Iraq and Israel while the Democrats rip one another apart.

It took Nixon for us to appreciate Jimmy Carter's simple honesty. It took Clinton and Monica for us to value George W. Bush's personal character. And it takes the unseemly battle among the Democrats for us to give John McCain his due.

When Obama faces McCain in the general election (not if but when) the legacy of the Wright scandal will not be to question Obama's patriotism or love of America. It will be to ask if he has the right stuff (pardon the pun).

The largest gap between McCain and Obama in the most recent USA Today/Gallup Poll was on the trait of leadership. Asked if each man was a “strong, decisive leader,” 69 percent felt that the description fit McCain while only 56 percent thought it would apply to Obama, and 61 percent said it of Hillary. Obama has looked weak handling the Wright controversy.

His labored explanation of why he attacks the sin but loves the sinner comes across as elegant but, at the same time, feeble. Obama's reluctance to trade punches with his opponents makes us wonder if he could trade them with bin Laden or Ahmadinejad.

We have no doubt that McCain would gladly come to blows and would represent us well, but about Obama we are not so sure.

Getting Mrs. ClintonMarch 28, 2008WSJI think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.

That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).

AP But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape.

Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves.

Not that her staff isn't policing them too. Mrs. Clinton's people are heavy-handed in that area, letting producers and correspondents know they're watching, weighing, may have to take this higher. There's too much of this in politics, but Hillary's campaign takes it to a new level.

It's not only the press. It's what I get as I walk around New York, which used to be thick with her people. I went to a Hillary fund-raiser at Hunter College about a month ago, paying for a seat in the balcony and being ushered up to fill the more expensive section on the floor, so frantic were they to fill seats.

I sat next to a woman, a New York Democrat who'd been for Hillary from the beginning and still was. She was here. But, she said, "It doesn't seem to be working." She shrugged, not like a brokenhearted person but a practical person who'd missed all the signs of something coming. She wasn't mad at the voters. But she was no longer so taken by the woman who soon took the stage and enacted joy.

The other day a bookseller told me he'd been reading the opinion pages of the papers and noting the anti-Hillary feeling. Two weeks ago he realized he wasn't for her anymore. It wasn't one incident, just an accumulation of things. His experience tracks this week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Mrs. Clinton's disapproval numbers have risen to the highest level ever in the campaign, her highest in fact in seven years.

* * *

You'd think she'd pivot back to showing a likable side, chatting with women, weeping, wearing the bright yellows and reds that are thought to appeal to her core following, older women. Well, she's doing that. Yet at the same time, her campaign reveals new levels of thuggishness, though that's the wrong word, for thugs are often effective. This is mere heavy-handedness.

On Wednesday a group of Mrs. Clinton's top donors sent a letter to the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, warning her in language that they no doubt thought subtle but that reflected a kind of incompetent menace, that her statements on the presidential campaign may result in less money for Democratic candidates for the House. Ms. Pelosi had said that in her view the superdelegates should support the presidential candidate who wins the most pledged delegates in state contests. The letter urged her to "clarify" her position, which is "clearly untenable" and "runs counter" to the superdelegates' right to make "an informed, individual decision" about "who would be the party's strongest nominee." The signers, noting their past and huge financial support, suggested that Ms. Pelosi "reflect" on her comments and amend them to reflect "a more open view."

Barack Obama's campaign called it inappropriate and said Mrs. Clinton should "reject the insinuation." But why would she? All she has now is bluster. Her supporters put their threat in a letter, not in a private meeting. By threatening Ms. Pelosi publicly, they robbed her of room to maneuver. She has to defy them or back down. She has always struck me as rather grittier than her chic suits, high heels and unhidden enthusiasm may suggest. We'll see.

What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)

She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.

* * *

What struck me as the best commentary on the Bosnia story came from a poster called GI Joe who wrote in to a news blog: "Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy." Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. "She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself." Then she turned to his wounds. "She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood."

Made me laugh. It was like the voice of the people answering back. This guy knows that what Mrs. Clinton said is sort of crazy. He seems to know her reputation for untruths. He seemed to be saying, "I get it."

Limbaugh's strategy is working for now. Leave Clinton in the race and this is continuing to hurt the Crats. But this will be all resolved by the time of election. And the polls that show some crats would not vote for either BO or Clinton mean nothing. Come november they will all vote for whoever the crat candidate is. Remember Republicans are worse than Nazis in the eyes of most crats.

With that said I still disagree with Rush. Anytime anyone has a chance to get rid of the Clintons, do so. This country has to get them off the stage. They are damaging this country. Knock them out once and for all. Get rid of them. Go away. Stop torturing us with their sick personalities.

An excerpt from David Brooks says it all:

"For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head."

The full piece:

****The Long Defeat

By DAVID BROOKSPublished: March 25, 2008

Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign.Skip to next paragraph

David BrooksRelatedGo to Columnist Page »Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the Web

First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.

Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.

Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.

In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule?

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.

If she does the former, she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw. If she does not, she would soldier on doggedly, taking down as many allies as necessary.

Hillary Clinton goes to her doctor for a check-up, only to find out that she's pregnant. She is furious... Here she is in the middle of her first run for President as Senator for New York .... now this has happened to her. She calls home, gets Bill on the phone and immediately starts screaming:

'How could you have let this happen? With all that's going on right now, you go and get me pregnant! How could you? I can't believe this! I've just found out I'm five weeks pregnant and it's all your fault! Well, what have you got to say?'

There is nothing but silence on the phone. She screams again, 'Did you hear me?'

***Hillary Clinton’s campaign currently owes vendors $8 million, exclusive of the $5 million she owes herself. She cannot use general election money to pay for this debt. If she begins to be anything less than certain that she will stay in up to the convention, she won’t raise any money and will be stuck with the debt. She also realizes that it is only by projecting an almost manic air of certainty that she has any chance at all of hanging onto super delegates. The first whiff they get of a withdrawal, they will all run screaming to Obama to get on the late train. Don’t think that Hillary is delusional. She knows she’s lost but she has no choice but to play the rest of the game. To fold now would leave her in an untenable situation.***

They need cash. Not only to pay off their debts but to rake it in for future plans of inflicting themselves on the Democrats and this nation.

What a joke that Bill Clinton is outraged that Richardson told him "five" times he wouldn't do what he did [come out for Obama]He and his accomplice are the world's biggest G..M liars and are ruining this country by making it respectable to lie incessantly.

Our children grow up being taught that this behavior is ok. They are pigs as far as I am concerned

Hopefully after she loses their power with the Dems will forever dimisnish and they will just fade out over the years.

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.

“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.

Linda M. Weiss, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story, which Mrs. Clinton had first heard from a Meigs County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputy in late February.

A Clinton spokesman, Mo Elleithee, said candidates would frequently retell stories relayed to them, vetting them when possible. “In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it,” Mr. Elleithee said. “If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that.”

The sheriff’s deputy, Bryan Holman, had played host to Mrs. Clinton in his home before the Ohio primary. Deputy Holman said in a telephone interview that a conversation about health care led him to relate the story of Ms. Bachtel. He never mentioned the name of the hospital that supposedly turned her away because he did not know it, he said.

Deputy Holman knew Ms. Bachtel’s story only secondhand, having learned it from close relatives of the woman. Ms. Bachtel’s relatives did not return phone calls Friday.

As Deputy Holman understood it, Ms. Bachtel had died of complications from a stillbirth after being turned away by a local hospital for her failure to pay $100 upfront.

“I mentioned this story to Senator Clinton, and she apparently took to it and liked it,” Deputy Holman said, “and one of her aides said she’d be using it at some rallies.”

Indeed, saying that the story haunted her, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly offered it as a dire example of a broken health care system. At one March rally in Wyoming, for instance, she referred to Ms. Bachtel, a 35-year-old who managed a Pizza Hut, as a young, uninsured minimum-wage worker, saying, “It hurts me that in our country, as rich and good of a country as we are, this young woman and her baby died because she couldn’t come up with $100 to see the doctor.”

Mrs. Clinton does not name Ms. Bachtel or the hospital in her speeches. As she tells it, the woman was turned away twice by a local hospital when she was experiencing difficulty with her pregnancy. “The hospital said, ‘Well, you don’t have insurance.’ She said, ‘No, I don’t.’ They said, ‘Well, we can’t see you until you give $100.’ She said, ‘Where am I going to get $100?’

“The next time she came back to the hospital, she came in an ambulance,” Mrs. Clinton continued. “She was in distress. The doctors and the nurses worked on her and couldn’t save the baby.”

Since Ms. Bachtel’s baby died at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital, the story implicitly and inaccurately accuses that hospital of turning her away, said Ms. Weiss, the spokeswoman for O’Bleness Memorial said. Instead, the O’Bleness health care system treated her, both at the hospital and at the affiliated River Rose Obstetrics and Gynecology practice, Ms. Weiss said.

The hospital would not provide details about the woman’s case, citing privacy concerns; she died two weeks after the stillbirth at a medical center in Columbus.

“We reviewed the medical and patient account records of this patient,” said Mr. Castrop, the health system’s chief executive. Any implication that the system was “involved in denying care is definitely not true.”

Although Mrs. Clinton has told the story repeatedly, it first came to the attention of the hospital after The Washington Post cited it as a staple of her stump speeches on Thursday. That brought it to the attention of The Daily Sentinel in Pomeroy, Ohio, which published an article on Friday.

Neither paper named the hospital or challenged Mrs. Clinton’s account.

Clinton Tax LessonsApril 7, 2008; Page A12New York Senator Hillary Clinton and her husband spend a lot of time on the Presidential trail deploring the "wealthy" and "well-connected." As their newly released tax records for 2000 to 2007 show, they know of whom they speak.

The former, and perhaps future, first couple earned $109 million over the past eight years, putting them among the top .01% of taxpayers. Apparently the Bush years haven't been a Depression era for everyone. The bulk of the Clintons' income came from speech-making ($51.9 million) and book-writing ($29.6 million), and it's hard to begrudge their desire to cash in on the Presidency after toiling for so many years in public service. The Clintons are hardly unique in showing that in today's Washington you can do very, very well after you've done good.

AP Senator Hillary Clinton We can also now understand why the couple took so long to release their returns, and are still reluctant to release other information. Their political status has given them access to wealthy folks who've helped make them rich. For example, Mr. Clinton raked in as much as $15 million working as an adviser and rainmaker for billionaire financier Ron Burkle's Yucaipa firm. We're not sure what advice Mr. Clinton gave but it must have been fabulous. The former President also took in $3.3 million in consulting fees from InfoUSA CEO Vinod Gupta, who has also helped fund Mrs. Clinton's White House bid. These are not opportunities that fall into every American's lap.

Meanwhile, the Clintons also made liberal use of the charitable deduction, claiming $10.2 million in charitable giving over the eight years. Intriguingly, nearly all the donations went to the Clinton Family Foundation, which has disbursed only half the money. The Clintons can thus use the foundation for, er, strategic giving, such as the $100,000 it donated last year to a local South Carolina library – the day after Mrs. Clinton debated in that key primary state. There are other examples of such politically targeted philanthropy, and it's worth noting that most of the foundation's disbursements came only after Mrs. Clinton announced her Presidential run.

Similar conflict-of-interest questions apply to the separate William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, for which the couple has so far refused to release a list of donors. Such a list could contain more of the likes of Canadian mining tycoon Frank Giustra, who took Mr. Clinton along on a trip to Kazakhstan as a character reference, won a Kazakh mining concession, and gave more than $30 million to the foundation. The Clintons have an obligation to let voters see who their foundation donors are.

Like other Americans during this tax season, the Clintons have also had to endure the complexity of the tax code. Their 2006 return alone totaled 67 pages. While they can afford a smart accountant to sift through all those forms, would it be too optimistic to think Mrs. Clinton might be inspired by her tax experience to promote tax reform?

Alas, yes. Senator Clinton's main tax proposal is to repeal the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, raising rates to the levels of the Clinton Presidency. "We didn't ask for George Bush's tax cuts. We didn't want them, and we didn't need them," Mrs. Clinton explained.

With friends like Mr. Burkle, clearly they didn't. But her higher tax rates wouldn't merely hit those who make $109 million; they'd soak middle-class families that make $100,000 or $200,000 a year and hardly feel "rich." If the former first lady feels so strongly that she should pay more taxes, we suggest she lay off the middle class and instead write a personal check to the U.S. Treasury for the difference between the Clinton and Bush tax rates. She and her husband can afford it.

Transparency is a popular word in this presidential election, with all three candidates finally having released their tax returns. Yet the public still hasn't seen the records of an institution with some of the biggest potential for special-interest mischief: The William J. Clinton Foundation.

Bill Clinton established that body in 1997 while still President. It has since raised half-a-billion dollars, which has been spent on Mr. Clinton's presidential library in Arkansas and global philanthropic initiatives. The mystery remains its donors, and whether these contributors might one day seek to call in their chits with a President Hillary Clinton.

That's no small matter given the former first couple's history. Yet Mr. Clinton says he won't violate the "privacy" of donors by disclosing their names, even if his wife wins the Oval Office. What is already in the public record should make that secrecy untenable, however:

Chicago bankruptcy lawyer William Brandt Jr. pledged $1 million for the Clinton library in May 1999, at the same time the Justice Department was investigating whether he'd lied about a Clinton fundraising event. The Clinton DOJ cleared him a few months later.

Loral Space and Communications then-CEO, Bernard Schwartz, committed to $1 million in 2000, at the same time the firm was being investigated for improperly sending technology to China. Loral agreed to a $14 million fine during the Bush Administration.

A major investor in cellular firm NextWave – Bay Harbour Management – pledged $1 million in 1999, when NextWave was waiting to see if the Clinton FCC would allow it to keep its cellular licenses. NextWave didn't immediately get its licenses, and Bay Harbour never made good on its pledge.

And let's not forget the $450,000 contribution from Denise Rich, which was followed by Mr. Clinton's pardon of her fugitive husband, Marc Rich.

American citizens are limited to donating $2,300 to presidential candidates, but there are no limits on gifts to presidential foundations. We don't think there should be limits, but without disclosure the potential for political conflicts, real or apparent, is extensive. Were it not for some enterprising journalism by the New York Sun in 2004, for example, we might not know that notorious trial lawyer William Lerach had made a donation to Mr. Clinton's foundation. Lerach has since been indicted for, and pled guilty to, fraud. Would the Clinton Administration have pursued a similar fraud case?

Presidential candidates also aren't allowed to accept campaign checks from foreigners, but, again, no such restrictions apply to foundations. We know that donations to the Clinton Foundation have come from the Saudi royal family, the king of Morocco, and the governments of Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Brunei. Wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen have also given big.

Mr. Clinton has also accepted money from a Chinese Internet company, Alibaba, which aids the Beijing government in censoring the Web. Most recently, one of Alibaba's Chinese homepages posted a "most wanted" list of Tibetan rioters, with pictures and a phone number for informants to call. Mrs. Clinton has condemned the Chinese crackdown on Tibet, but her husband notably hasn't returned the Alibaba money.

No doubt all of these donors would say they gave their money without a single string attached, and Mr. Clinton rightly points out that other former Presidents keep their library donors under wraps. If Mr. Clinton were merely a former President building a library for history's sake, we might not worry. But he is a potential first husband whose spouse could influence countless decisions, foreign and domestic.

Mr. Clinton seems to understand the value of his mere association. Consider his relationship with Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who took Mr. Clinton on a trip to Kazakhstan in 2005, won a Kazakh mining concession, and then committed to donate more than $130 million to the Clinton Foundation. In a letter we recently published, Mr. Giustra insists his gift was entirely philanthropic and that he won the Kazakh concession on the merits.

More recently, we've also learned Mr. Clinton arranged for Mr. Giustra to meet with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. A Canadian company that Mr. Giustra's firm was advising later acquired interests in Colombian oil fields. Some of the money Mr. Giustra has given the Clinton Foundation has been earmarked for development projects in Colombia.

How many favors has Mr. Clinton done for foreign donors? There's no way of knowing. The former President insists he's aware of no conflicts. Notably, however, donations to the Clinton Foundation soared as Mrs. Clinton neared a presidential run – to $135 million in 2006, 70% more than the year before. Somebody seems to think there is value in being generous to the Clintons.

Mrs. Clinton says the foundation is her husband's business, not hers. But as she has said in the past, a Clinton Presidency is two for the price of one. Americans deserve to know who has been donating to the Clinton Foundation.

this whole concept that Hillary could and should win if only she runs the right campaign is wrong. Hillary lost because of the nature of who she is. She is a chornic bullshit artist, dishones, selfish to the core as her "skinny" Santa husband. She lost because she has very high negatives because of who she is and her flawed character - period.

This whole concept that no matter who she is the American electorate can forever be manipulated to like her is flawed. You can fool some of the people some of the time...

Look - to all Clinton lovers - feminist chicks included - your candidate is dishonest, fraudulent, selfish, narcissistic, and hated by 45% of all Americans forvever. They have to stop ruining forever American politics. We have to get back to at least some semblence of character. Some semblence of honesty and forthrightness. Bo is trying to come across this way (although I don't believe him either) but he is absolutely right that Americans are craving good, decent honest leaders. The Clintons are not, have never been, and will never be that.

***By KAREN TUMULTY 50 minutes ago

For all her talk about "full speed on to the White House," there was an unmistakably elegiac tone to Hillary Clinton's primary-night speech in Indianapolis. And if one needed further confirmation that the undaunted, never-say-die Clintons realize their bid might be at an end, all it took was a look at the wistful faces of the husband and the daughter who stood behind the candidate as she talked of all the people she has met in a journey "that has been a blessing for me."ADVERTISEMENT

It was also a journey she had begun with what appeared to be insurmountable advantages, which evaporated one by one as the campaign dragged on far longer than anyone could have anticipated. She made at least five big mistakes, each of which compounded the others:

1. She misjudged the moodThat was probably her biggest blunder. In a cycle that has been all about change, Clinton chose an incumbent's strategy, running on experience, preparedness, inevitability - and the power of the strongest brand name in Democratic politics. It made sense, given who she is and the additional doubts that some voters might have about making a woman Commander in Chief. But in putting her focus on positioning herself to win the general election in November, Clinton completely misread the mood of Democratic-primary voters, who were desperate to turn the page. "Being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change," says Barack Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod. Clinton's "initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands." But other miscalculations made it worse:

2. She didn't master the rulesClinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified - and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign now acknowledges privately:

3. She underestimated the caucus statesWhile Clinton based her strategy on the big contests, she seemed to virtually overlook states like Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, which choose their delegates through caucuses. She had a reason: the Clintons decided, says an adviser, that "caucus states were not really their thing." Her core supporters - women, the elderly, those with blue-collar jobs - were less likely to be able to commit an evening of the week, as the process requires. But it was a little like unilateral disarmament in states worth 12% of the pledged delegates. Indeed, it was in the caucus states that Obama piled up his lead among pledged delegates. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they - bewilderingly - seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."

By the time Clinton's lieutenants realized the grave nature of their error, they lacked the resources to do anything about it - in part because:

4. She relied on old moneyFor a decade or more, the Clintons set the standard for political fund-raising in the Democratic Party, and nearly all Bill's old donors had re-upped for Hillary's bid. Her 2006 Senate campaign had raised an astonishing $51.6 million against token opposition, in what everyone assumed was merely a dry run for a far bigger contest. But something had happened to fund-raising that Team Clinton didn't fully grasp: the Internet. Though Clinton's totals from working the shrimp-cocktail circuit remained impressive by every historic measure, her donors were typically big-check writers. And once they had ponied up the $2,300 allowed by law, they were forbidden to give more. The once bottomless Clinton well was drying up.

Obama relied instead on a different model: the 800,000-plus people who had signed up on his website and could continue sending money his way $5, $10 and $50 at a time. (The campaign has raised more than $100 million online, better than half its total.) Meanwhile, the Clintons were forced to tap the $100 million - plus fortune they had acquired since he left the White House - first for $5 million in January to make it to Super Tuesday and then $6.4 million to get her through Indiana and North Carolina. And that reflects one final mistake:

5. She never counted on a long haulClinton's strategy had been premised on delivering a knockout blow early. If she could win Iowa, she believed, the race would be over. Clinton spent lavishly there yet finished a disappointing third. What surprised the Obama forces was how long it took her campaign to retool. She fought him to a tie in the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests but didn't have any troops in place for the states that followed. Obama, on the other hand, was a train running hard on two or three tracks. Whatever the Chicago headquarters was unveiling to win immediate contests, it always had a separate operation setting up organizations in the states that were next. As far back as Feb. 21, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was spotted in Raleigh, N.C. He told the News & Observer that the state's primary, then more than 10 weeks away, "could end up being very important in the nomination fight." At the time, the idea seemed laughable.

Now, of course, the question seems not whether Clinton will exit the race but when. She continues to load her schedule with campaign stops, even as calls for her to concede grow louder. But the voice she is listening to now is the one inside her head, explains a longtime aide. Clinton's calculation is as much about history as it is about politics. As the first woman to have come this far, Clinton has told those close to her, she wants people who invested their hopes in her to see that she has given it her best. And then? As she said in Indianapolis, "No matter what happens, I will work for the nominee of the Democratic Party because we must win in November." When the task at hand is healing divisions in the Democratic Party, the loser can have as much influence as the winner. View this article on Time.com***

The Clinton DivorceMay 9, 2008; Page A16No, we don't mean Bill and Hillary. We mean the separation now under way between the Clintons and the Democratic Party. Like all divorces after lengthy unions, this one is painful and has had its moments of reconciliation, but after Tuesday a split looks inevitable. The long co-dependency is over.

Truth be told, this was always a marriage more of convenience than love. The party's progressives never did like Bill Clinton's New Democrat ways, but after Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis they needed his epic political gifts to win back the White House. They hated him for their loss of Congress in 1994, but they tolerated Dick Morris and welfare reform to keep the presidency in 1996.

AP The price was that they had to put their ethics in a blind Clinton trust. Whitewater and the missing billing records, Webb Hubbell, cattle futures and "Red" Bone, the Lincoln Bedroom, Johnny Chung and the overseas fund-raising scandals, Paula Jones and lying under oath, Monica and the meaning of "is." Democrats, or all of them this side of Joe Lieberman and Pat Moynihan, defended the Clintons through it all. Everything was dismissed as a product of the "Republican attack machine," an invention of the "Clinton haters," or "just about sex."

Democrats and the media did make a fleeting attempt at liberation when Bill Clinton left office after 2000 amid the tawdry pardons. Barney Frank, the most fervent of the Clinton defenders throughout the 1990s, even called the pardons a "betrayal" and "contemptuous." More than a few Democrats also noticed that George W. Bush's main campaign theme in 2000 was restoring "dignity" and "honor" to the Oval Office, and that Al Gore had somehow lost despite two-thirds of voters saying the U.S. was moving in the right direction.

But Hillary Clinton had also won a Senate seat that year, and she had presidential ambitions of her own. So the trial separation was brief. Democrats acquiesced as the first couple put their own money man, Terry McAuliffe, in charge of the Democratic National Committee. As the Bush years rolled on and John Kerry lost, they watched Hillary build her machine and plot a Clinton restoration. They watched, too, as the New York Senator did her own triangulating on Iraq, first voting for it, then supporting it before turning against it as the election neared. Party regulars fell in line behind her, and her nomination was said to be "inevitable."

Then something astonishing happened. A new star emerged in Barack Obama, a man who had Bill Clinton's political talent but Hillary's liberal convictions. He had charisma, a flair for raising money, and he held out the chance of a 2008 Democratic landslide. Something more than a return to the trench warfare of the 1990s seemed possible – perhaps the revival of a liberal majority, circa 1965.

More remarkable still, Democrats supporting Mr. Obama had a revelation about Clintonian mores. David Geffen, channeling William Safire, declared that "everybody in politics lies," but the Clintons "do it with such ease, it's troubling." Ted Kennedy was shocked to see the Clintons play the race card in South Carolina. The media discovered their secrecy over tax records and Clinton Foundation donors, while columnists were appalled to hear her assail Mr. Obama for his associations with radical bomber William Ayers. Listen closely and you could almost hear Bob Dole asking, "Where's the outrage?"

By the time Mrs. Clinton made her famous claim about dodging Bosnian sniper fire, Democrats and their media friends no longer called it a mere gaffe, as they once might have. This time the remark was said to be emblematic of her entire political career. The same folks who had believed her about Whitewater and the rest now claimed she never tells the truth about anything.

As the scales suddenly fell from liberal eyes, the most striking statistic was the one in this week's North Carolina exit poll. Asked if they considered Mrs. Clinton "honest and trustworthy," no fewer than 50% of Democratic primary voters said she was not. In Indiana, the figure was merely 45%.

Slowly but surely, these Prisoners of Bill and Hill are now walking away, urging Mrs. Clinton to leave the race. Chuck Schumer damns her with faint support by saying any decision is up to her. Columnists from the New York Times, which endorsed her when she looked inevitable, now demand that she exit so as not to help John McCain. With Mr. Obama to ride, they no longer need the Arkansas interlopers.

If the Clintons play to their historic form, they will ignore all this for as long as they can. They will fight on, hoping that something else turns up about Mr. Obama before the convention. Or they'll try to play the Michigan and Florida cards. Or they'll unleash Harold Ickes on the superdelegates and suggest that if Mr. Obama loses in November she'll be back in 2012 and her revenge will be, well, Clintonian.

The difference between now and the 1990s, however, is that this time the Clinton foes aren't the "vast right-wing conspiracy." This time the conspirators are fellow Democrats. It took 10 years, but you might say Democrats have finally voted to impeach.

Can He Take a Frisk? Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print ShareDiggFacebookMixxYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy MAUREEN DOWDPublished: May 28, 2008After “Rahmbo” Emanuel, the Illinois congressman dubbed “the hostage negotiator” by the Obama forces, fails to talk Hillary down, Barack Obama knows that he is left with one final roll of the dice. He sets up a secret meeting with Bill Clinton in neutral territory at Rahm’s hideaway office in the Capitol.

“If you brought me over here to cry uncle, shame on you, Barack Obama. You and your press lackeys are engaged in a cover-up even though Hillary’s winnin’ the popular vote and the general election.”

“Hey, Bill, please, stop wagging your finger at me. Call off Harold Ickes and the Hillaryland Huns. You’re right. I can’t win without her. The two of us can clean McCain’s grandfather clock.”

“Goshalmighty. You could knock me over with a hair on a biscuit, Barack. Smart move, everybody wins. Now Hillary won’t be the skunk at your Denver garden party.”

“That’s why they call me: No Drama Obama.”

“You’re a natural, like me. I was for hope; you are for hope. I was for change; you are for change. I took the Camelot sword from J.F.K.; you took it from Teddy. I would have been with you from the beginning except for that little deal I had with Hillary. She’s going to be so relieved that she doesn’t have to return to the back rows of the Senate with everybody there snickering that she flopped. And if something happens to you, God forbid, she’s right there in the Situation Room, ready to go at 3 a.m. on her Day One.”

“Yeah. I really want to announce this quickly, so let’s clear up a few niggling details.”

“Mr. President, I’m going to run a very transparent administration, everything on C-Span. So I’ll need a full accounting of your foundation donors.”

“Oh, sure thing, buddy, from this day forward.”

“No, Bill, we’ll need full disclosure of your business dealings for the last eight years. And you can no longer accept Arab millions — not if I’m going to talk tough to them about oil. I can’t send Hillary on diplomatic missions to the Middle East if you’re taking money from Dubai and Kuwait. And no more trips to Kazakhstan. I wouldn’t want to have to put a Geiger-counter bracelet on you to check that you’re not involved in another shady uranium deal.”

“Ha, ha.”

“We need to know where that $11 million came from that you guys loaned your campaign. And the $15 million from Ron Burkle at Yucaipa and the $3 million from Vinod Gupta. And you must spill about any offshore accounts in the Caymans. And no more big-money speeches, Bill. You guys have already cashed in for more than $100 million.”

“You’re right, Barack, no more speeches. Just conversations. If a C.E.O. interviews me in front of a small audience, that’s fine. But no speeches.”

“I’m not debating the meaning of the word ‘speech,’ Bill. We’re going to have an administration so squeaky clean that it makes Jimmy Carter look like Marc Rich. All your trips abroad will have to be authorized by a higher authority.”

“The State Department? Fine, I’ll check with them.”

“Higher.”

“Oh, no. Not that.”

“Yes, Michelle. She’ll have you on a much shorter leash, Bill, and it’s not so fun. There’ll be no more Ron Air, no Burkling and Binging. Eight long years of Michelle watching your every move. No eruptions of any kind. And that big telescope in the Naval Observatory is off limits. We’re going to be a family-values administration. And in the campaign, we’ll use you the way Al Gore did: Not at all. No more Bill YouTube meltdowns.”

“You know, Barack, the more I’m seein’ what you’ve got in mind for me, the more I’m worryin’ that Hillary’s just not cut out for this job. You don’t want her glomming on to everythin’. Since she’s almost even with the delegates, she’ll want to go halfsies in the government. She’ll want to run foreign policy, cause you know nothin’ about that. And legal stuff, because you never practiced real law. And economic policy, ’cause she connected better with working-class voters. And everything to do with white people, of course. I’ve got to level with you, man. Hillary’s a lot of work. And that Kathleen Sebelius is terrific and has those twinkly eyes.”

“So, Bill, you’re not wedded to Hillary being vice president? You won’t sabotage my campaign if I pick somebody I like, I mean, like, if I pick somebody else?”

“Nah. Now that I see the big picture, the idea of Hillary as your No. 2 was always a fairy tale.”

I love Peggy Noonan, but in my opinion she has been getting a bit wooly headed of late. There's some of that on display here, but there are good points too._________________________

DECLARATIONS By PEGGY NOONAN

Recoil ElectionJune 6, 2008; Page A11It is the most amazing thing that a young black man who was just a few short years ago unknown to most of his countrymen—really, unknown—could, this week, win the presidential nomination of one of our two great political parties. It is even more amazing that this historic news could be overshadowed by the personal drama and spite of the woman who lost to him.

M.E. Cohen I like it that she spent the campaign accusing America of being sexist, of treating her differently because she is a woman, and then, when she lacked the grace to congratulate the victor, she sent her stewards out to tell the press she just needs time, it's so emotional. In other words, she needs space because she's a woman.

A friend sent, by instant message, the AP flash that ran at 16:56 ET on 06-03-2008. There it was suddenly on my screen:

"*** WASHINGTON (AP)—Obama clinches Democratic nomination, making him first black candidate to lead his party."

A great old-school bulletin, and of course it carried a huge and moving message. It is good when barriers fall; it's good when possibilities seem to open up to more people, especially the young, who are always watching. (That's what's wrong with them, they're always watching, and we're always doing terrible things, like, say, not congratulating the winner on the night he won.)

But what I thought of when the friend sent the flash was something another friend told me months ago. It was the night Mr. Obama won Alabama. My friend was watching on TV, in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, looked, saw "Obama Wins" and "Alabama." She said, "Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school." She said, "That's where they used the hoses." Suddenly my friend saw it new. That's the place they used the water hoses on the civil rights marchers crossing the bridge. And now look. The black man thanking Alabama for his victory.

What kind of place makes a change like this? Only a great nation. We should love it tenderly every day of our lives.

* * *

We will hear a lot of tasteful tributes this weekend to Hillary Clinton's grit and fortitude. The Washington-based media may go a little over the top, but only out of relief. They know her well and recoil at what she stands for. They also know they don't like her, so to balance it out they'll gush.

But this I believe is the truth: America dodged a bullet. That was the other meaning of the culminating events of this week.

Mrs. Clinton would have been a disaster as president. Mr. Obama may prove a disaster, and John McCain may, but she would be. Mr. Obama may lie, and Mr. McCain may lie, but she would lie. And she would have brought the whole rattling caravan of Clintonism with her—the scandal-making that is compulsive, the drama that is unending, the sheer, daily madness that is her, and him.

We have been spared this. Those who did it deserve to be thanked. May I rise in a toast to the Democratic Party.

They had a great and roaring fight, a state-by-state struggle unprecedented in the history of presidential primaries. They created the truly national primary. They brought 36 million people to the polls, including the young, minorities and first-time voters. They brought a kind of dogged brio to the year.

All of this is impressive, but more than that, they threw off Clintonism. They threw off the idea that corruption is part of the game, an acceptable fact. They threw off the idea that dynasticism was an unstoppable dynamic in modern politics, that Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton could, would, go on forever. They said: "No, that is not the way we do it."

They threw off the idea of inevitability. Mrs. Clinton didn't lose because she had no money or organization, she didn't lose because she had no fame or name, she didn't lose because her policies were unusual or dramatically unpopular within her party. She lost because enough Democrats looked at her and thought: I don't like that, I don't like the way she does it, I'm not going there. Most candidates lose over things, not over their essential nature. But that is what happened here. For all her accomplishments and success, it was her sketchy character that in the end did her in.

But the voters had to make the decision. So, to the Democrats: A nod. A bow. Well done.

May this mark the beginning of the remoralization of a great party.

* * *

Should he make her his vice president? He shouldn't, and he won't.

The reasons:

The only ones who could force him to do it are party elders, and they don't like Mrs. Clinton. They're the ones who finally forced her from the race. Their antipathy was not apparent when she was inevitable. It is obvious now.

She would never be content to be vice president. She'd be plotting against him from day one. She'd put poison in his tea.

She brings Bill.

She undercuts the cleanness of Obama's message. She doesn't turn the page, she is the page.

She would give Republicans something to get excited about. She will revivify them. They're not excited about Mr. McCain, but they could become excited about opposing her.

Her presence on the ticket would force the party to have two breakthrough moments when a rule of political life, and life in general, is: one breakthrough at a time.

He doesn't need her. He needs a boring white man. Because he's an interesting black man. He needs a sober, experienced, older establishment player who will be respected by the press, the first responders of the political game. They'll set the tone in which the choice is celebrated, or not. He needs someone like Sam Nunn. Or, actually, Sam Nunn. He could throw a wild pass at Jim Webb because he has a real-guy, Southern, semi-working-class persona, and a Scots-Irish grit and chippiness. He is from important Virginia, has Vietnam boots and is moderate.

Choosing Mrs. Clinton would make Mr. Obama look weak. No one would believe he picked her because he respected or liked her. They'd think he was appeasing her. This is not something he can afford! And in any case some people cannot be appeased. Voters would assume she and her people did their voodoo—I have 18 million voters!—and he fell for it. She doesn't have 18 million voters, she got 18 million votes. It is telling the way she thinks of them, as if they are working-class automatons awaiting her command.

As for reports of their rage, there are always dead-enders, and frantic lovers of this candidate or that. This goes under the larger heading "lonely people." But there's reason to think, and some Democratic insiders do think it, that a lot of the supposed pro-Clinton furor is ginned up on Web sites by the Clinton campaign, and even manufactured by the Clinton campaign, to prove Clinton loyalists are real and their demands must be met. In any case, you can see how Mrs. Clinton views her supposed working-class heroes by what she is doing with them now: using them as a bargaining chip to get whatever she wants.

Democrats this year have the winning fever, and Democrats will come out. By November they will be united.

America "dodged a bullet" for now. Of course, it is far from over with the Clintons. Notice she says she is *suspending* her campaign.

"Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate...."

Dick Morris explains:

WHAT’S UP HILLARY’S SLEEVE?By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann06.6.2008

Published on FOXNews.com on June 6, 2008.

Why won’t Hillary just concede that she has lost and pull out of the race? Why does she persist in keeping her delegates in line for her and not releasing them to Obama? Why does she feign party unity while, in fact, undermining it?

The Clintons never do anything without a lot of thinking and planning. There is no benign explanation for her maneuvers. They have several options that they are deliberately keeping open by their increasingly awkward positioning. Here’s what they’re up to:

1. The Obama Stumbles Option

As Hillary says, June is “early” in politics when the convention is not to be held until the end of August, unusually late for a Democratic conclave. And, as Tip O’Neill says “a week is a long time in politics.” So is three months.

Rumors abound about incriminating material on Obama, the potential for misstep is amplified now that he adjusts to a new task of taking on McCain, who knows how many other preachers there are in the closet? Hillary’s skilled force of private detectives, who we once called the secret police, are doubtless diving into garbage dumpsters all over America to come up with whatever they can.

Hillary wants to be there to exploit any mistakes. She will be watching and waiting. Suppose Obama flubs a line on the campaign trail or damaging material emerges from the Rezko prosecution? Hillary will indicate her continued availability as an alternative. Remember that superdelegates can change their minds anytime they want to. Now they are leaving Hillary to back Obama, the winner, but they could easily go the other way. By not releasing her pledged delegates, she remains within striking distance of the nomination if an Obama faux pas leads to an exodus of superdelegates from his camp.

2. Hillary for VP

By remaining a force at the convention, Hillary might be in a position to bail out a faltering Obama campaign by going on the ticket. There is no love lost between the two candidates. Hillary knows that Obama will not choose her voluntarily as his running mate. But if Obama falters, he might just need the shot in the arm Hillary would represent. By remaining in the shadows as a potential threat to wrest away the nomination, she might leverage her position to make Obama put her on the ticket.

She wants to be VP in case Obama loses so she can be positioned for 2012 and in case he wins so she can shoot for the stars in 2016. And, she doesn’t want anyone else to have the job so as not to create a potential rival.

3. The I Told You So Option

By remaining viable and keeping her delegates, Hillary stays in play through the convention. Her aides and associates can be counted on to dump on Obama subtly and, often, anonymously, as he moves forward. If Obama loses the election, and did not take her on his ticket, she can run as the “I told you so” candidate in 2012, much as Ronald Reagan capitalized on Gerald Ford’s defeat in 1976, after Reagan had unsuccessfully sought the nomination, to bolster his credentials in 1980.

4. Paying Off Her Debts

By staying, at least partially, in the game, Hillary can continue to raise money and pay off her debts. And she can hold out a bargaining position to force Obama to do more and more to help her to raise money. Debts to her vendors are one thing. She can always raise funds to pay them off in the future. But the election law makes it illegal for her to pay herself back any sum above $250,000 after the Democratic Convention. Since she has lent her campaign at least $11 million, she wants to get as much of it back as possible before the convention deadline.

Hillary may set her candidacy aside for the moment. But her fortunes will continue to rise and fall inversely with Obama’s. Should he hit a rough patch, Hillary’s numbers are bound to improve, strengthening her bargaining position for funds or for the VP slot or, possibly giving her enough momentum to reopen the contest.

I don't know exactly where on the narcissism spectrum the Clinton's fall but it is frightening to think how this country keeps getting dragged through their psychopathology. While BO's politics are not at all my cup of tea at least there is nothing to suggest he is sick or nuts like the Clintons obviously are:

***Malignant narcissismFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, searchThis article is about Kernberg's theory. For the instrumental song by Rush, see Malignant Narcissism (song).

Otto Kernberg described malignant narcissism as a syndrome characterized by a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial features, paranoid traits, and ego-syntonic aggression. Other symptoms may include an absence of conscience, a psychological need for power, and a sense of importance (grandiosity). Pollock wrote: "The malignant narcissist is presented as pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism."[1]

Kernberg claimed that malignant narcissism should be considered part of a spectrum of pathological narcissism, which he saw as ranging from the Cleckley's antisocial character (today's psychopath) at the high end of severity, to malignant narcissism, to NPD at the low end.[2] Kernberg wrote that malignant narcissism can be differentiated from psychopathy because of the malignant narcissists' capacity to internalize "both aggressive and idealized superego precursors, leading to the idealization of the aggressive, sadistic features of the pathological grandiose self of these patients." According to Kernberg, the psychopaths' paranoid stance against external influences makes them unwilling to internalize even the values of the "aggressor," while malignant narcissists "have the capacity to admire powerful people, and can depend on sadistic and powerful but reliable parental images." Malignant narcissists, in contrast to psychopaths, are also said to be capable of developing "some identification with other powerful idealized figures as part of a cohesive 'gang' ... which permits at least some loyalty and good object relations to be internalized." The malignant narcissist's main differences in impulse control from the psycopath is in the area of desired outcomes. While the psychopath displays more anti-social features, the malignant narcissist desires "unlimited power," a trait that is deemed positive in many capitalistic societies. It is possible for the malignant narcissist to move above and beyond their contemporaries, and make a postive contribution to society (although rarely is this the case). The malignant narcissist will attempt to make full use of their capabilities.

Malignant narcissism is related to narcissistic regression in infancy, in which the infant sees themself as the "center of the world." Whereas most infants grow out of this stage, the malignant narcissist is thought to be trapped in this period throughout their lifetime.

Malignant narcissism is highlighted as a key area when it comes to the study of mass, sexual, and serial murder.[3][4][citation needed]

By MARTIN PERETZThis is not about former President Bill Clinton's shakedown of the sheikhs. They can take care of themselves, Clinton Foundation or no Clinton Foundation.

APThis is also not about Hillary Clinton's vulnerability to her husband's donors. She can tell him to "go stuff it," which people say she's been doing for a long time anyway. Rest assured, the next secretary of state will not shirk her diplomatic obligations for the benefit of some scummy foreign mineral magnate's uranium.

What I've been tying to discern about the Clinton Foundation is why -- aside from the annual fancy party in New York -- foreign governments, other foundations and charities have given money to fund what they already do themselves.

I understand why McDonald's of central Arkansas would make a contribution to Mr. Clinton's present career. He has spent so much cash on Big Macs over three decades that they actually owe it to him. But I fail to grasp why the "I Won't Cheat" foundation gave a donation to Bill's charity. He isn't exactly an ideal poster boy.

The Opinion Journal WidgetDownload Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.None of these gifts were really big money, at least not for Mr. Clinton, for whom a million dollars isn't at all big anymore. But the scrounging operation seems to have dug down very deep to pull in thousand-dollar gifts.

There were four United Way contributions, one from the national outfit, three from local branches. Since when is the Clinton Foundation one of the approved charities of the United Way?

Then there are more serious questions about operating charities. What was the purpose of a contribution by the National Opera of Paris? Or of hospitals themselves in strained circumstances, like Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and Arkansas Children's Hospital?

The University of Cambridge and Liverpool University in the United Kingdom threw into the pot from the other side of the pond. American universities like Tufts, Columbia, Georgetown, Iowa State, Texas, Brown, Rensselaer Polytechnic, UCLA and its school of public health all gave, plus the University of Judaism with a whopping sum between $100,000 and $250,000. (Is Bill Clinton now supporting studies in theology?) Do these educational institutions have such deep pockets to share with Bill Clinton's ego?

On the donor list are also the names of the charities we all give to generically: Human Rights Watch (well, not me), Feed the Children, and the Hunger Project. The foundation also receives funding from the International Bank for Recovery and Development of the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. They have their own, far-reaching projects. Why would they give cash to charitable work for which Mr. Clinton is at most a matchmaker?

In Today's Opinion Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

In Hoc Anno DominiCongress Targets PhilanthropyAn Ethanol Bailout?

TODAY'S COLUMNIST

Business World: Get Ready for a Lost Decade – Holman W. Jenkins Jr.

COMMENTARY

Defense Spending Would Be a Great Stimulus – Martin Feldstein

Clinton's Donor List Raises Lots of Questions – Martin PeretzHow Bush Can Transcend the Shoe Thrower – Mark BowdenA Christmas Tale – 1919 – Hans von SpakovskyThere's a certain looseness here that spreads downwards: District 1199 of the Service Employees International Union gave old comrade Bill somewhere in the range of half a million bucks. And then spreads upwards, so to speak: Citi gave him from $1 million to $5 million. Perhaps Citi's gift was just a pledge. In that case, is Treasury now paying up?

Many are focused on the contributions of the Arab states. Mr. Clinton started his charity in 1997 with four years to go in his presidency, a period when no American law provided for the most elementary public reporting of the enterprise. Still, the fact that Saudi Arabia is on the donor list comes as no surprise.

What we now know is that Mr. Clinton was indiscriminating when it came to accepting cash from all sorts of countries. He took money from poor countries like Jamaica, and more prosperous countries like Italy. He dipped into the Irish Aid Fund and the Swedish Postal Lottery for big money, and for small money from the Social Economic Council of the Netherlands. And then there was an especially strange source from which he schnorrered: Citgo, Hugo Chávez's oil company. Even if the revolucion didn't gain points for this, it is unseemly for an American president to ask the energy company of the Venezuelan dictatorship for spare cash.

So where did all this fund-raised money go? Wouldn't you want to know to which philanthropic undertaking the King of Saudi Arabia and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques committed himself? This information is not in the report -- and it doesn't look like President-elect Obama has any interest in pushing for further disclosure. Maybe the king just gave to general expenses.

These columns have long believed that a President deserves the cabinet members he wants, barring some major dereliction. So if Barack Obama wants to make Hillary and Bill Clinton part of his governing team, that's his business. We can only hope he understands the Clinton family business he's taking on.

APTake Mr. Clinton's post-Presidential fund-raising, the scope of which he finally disclosed in late December after years of refusing and under pressure from the Obama transition. Amid the holidays and economic news, this window on the Clinton political method has received less attention than it deserves. Here is the spectacle of a former President circling the globe to raise at least $492 million over 10 years for his foundation -- much of it from assorted rogues, dictators and favor-seekers. We are supposed to believe that none of this -- and none of his future fund-raising -- will have any influence on Mrs. Clinton's conduct as Secretary of State.

The silence over this is itself remarkable. When Henry Kissinger was invited merely to co-chair the 9/11 Commission, the political left went bonkers about his foreign clients. In this case we have a Secretary of State nominee whose husband may have raised more than $60 million from various Middle East grandees, and Washington reacts with a yawn. Maybe someone will even ask about it at her nomination hearing today.

A Senator should ask, because this has the potential to complicate life for the new President. All the more so because under terms of his agreement with Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton will be able to keep raising foreign cash as long as the donors send the checks to a Clinton entity other than the "Clinton Global Initiative." Instead of being immediately disclosed, future donations will only be made public once a year and the exact amounts and dates of previous donations will never be made public.

While Mr. Clinton will submit some donations from foreign governments to Administration scrutiny, he need only do so if the donations are new or are of a significantly larger magnitude from a previous donation. In other words, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman can keep giving millions without U.S. government review even while Mrs. Clinton is America's chief diplomat. These disclosure limitations suggest that the Clintons seriously out-negotiated Team Obama. We hope the President-elect does better with Iran.

As for potential embarrassment, consider the "up to $5 million" in donations to the Clinton foundation from Gilbert Chagoury, known for his ties to Nigeria's former military dictator, General Sani Abacha. The Journal's John Emshwiller recently noted that unfortunately for Mr. Chagoury, after Abacha died in 1998, "Swiss and other European authorities froze a number of bank accounts, including some related to Mr. Chagoury, as part of an investigation by the Nigerian government and others about whether billions of dollars had been improperly taken out of the country during the Abacha regime, according to news reports and a 2001 British court decision in Abacha-related litigation. Mr. Chagoury later agreed to return funds, estimated to be as much as $300 million, to the Nigerian government in exchange for indemnity from possible charges and to unfreeze his accounts, according to the British court decision."

Another notable donor -- also up to $5 million -- is Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of former Ukraine president Leonid Kuchma. Mr. Pinchuk was mentioned in a 2005 Journal story headlined, "Haunted By Suspect Deals Of Old Regime." Suspect indeed. The "privatization" of the country's largest steel plant in a sale to a group including Mr. Pinchuk was later overturned after the country held a democratic election.

And only this month, the New York Times reported that New York developer Robert Congel gave $100,000 to the Clinton foundation in November, 2004, one month after the enactment of a law that gave Mr. Congel access to tax-exempt "green bonds" to build a shopping mall in Syracuse. Mrs. Clinton had supported the law, and within a year of the donation she secured $5 million in taxpayer funds for the complex.

It'd be nice to think Mr. Clinton would forswear this money-hustle while his wife is Secretary of State, but that self-sacrifice would belie his entire career. As for Mrs. Clinton, note the scrutiny that Eric Holder, Mr. Obama's Attorney General nominee, is coming under for his role in aiding pardons for 16 unrepentant Puerto Rican terrorists in 1999. But keep in mind the timing of those pardons was intended to help Mrs. Clinton win Puerto Rican support in her 2000 Senate campaign. Someone should ask her at today's hearing about the role she played in that pardon.

In signing up the Clintons -- always two for the price of one -- Mr. Obama is no doubt hoping to unite his party and mute Democratic criticism when mistakes happen. He is also hiring someone whose prominence and allies make her impossible to fire, even as she and her husband have a history of cutting ethical corners. Good luck.

In presenting herself to Congress to become Secretary of State, Senator Hillary Clinton at the least showed she will have little trouble conversing in the soft talk of the striped-pants set.

On the Middle East: "We cannot give up on peace." On China: "Much of what we will do depends on the choices China makes."

By default, then, the pro-forma hearing's hardest moments became the nominee's colloquies with Senator Richard Lugar over the status of Bill Clinton's foundation.

We discussed in this space yesterday the complications Mr. Clinton's donor list could create for the conduct of an Obama foreign policy. Senator Lugar pressed the disclosure point at the hearing, even proposing a detailed plan for handling future donations to the foundation. "The core of the problem," said Senator Lugar, "is that foreign governments and entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation as a means to gain favor with the Secretary of State."

Pointedly, Senator John Kerry, the committee chair, leaned in to let Senator Clinton know that Mr. Lugar was "expressing the view of the committee as a whole."

Senator Clinton replied that the agreement worked out between the foundation and the Obama transition was adequate.

No doubt Senator Clinton is sailing toward confirmation and then on to what she promises will be a new world of "smart power." But both Senators Lugar and Kerry have been around Washington long enough to be able to see political difficulty over the horizon.

While the troubled Clinton Presidency by now has been reduced to Monica, veteran Senators will recall that much of the problems had to do with money flowing into the Clinton campaign from mysterious donors and middle men. Then came the Republicans' turn, as the party broke apart on the Abramoff scandal. These senior Senators were trying to ensure that a promising new President doesn't founder on the practices of Washington past. Let's hope the two of them remain vigilant.

I was wrong. I thought the Clintons would control BO especially with many of his staff having been for them in the past.

****THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING CLINTONSBy Dick Morris 05.28.2009 Published on TheHill.com on May 26,2009

Asked why he was naming some of his rivals to top administration jobs, President Lyndon B. Johnson said it best: “I’d rather have them inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.” President Obama seems to echo Johnson’s management style in his handling of Bill and Hillary Clinton. By bringing them into his inner circle, he has marginalized them both and sharply reduced their freedom of action.

It may appear odd to describe a secretary of State as marginalized, but Obama has surrounded Hillary with his people and carved up her jurisdiction geographically. Former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) is in charge of Arab-Israeli relations. Dennis Ross has Iran. Former U.N. Ambassador Dick Holbrooke has Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Hillary has to share her foreign policy role on the National Security Council (NSC) with Vice President Biden, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, CIA chief Leon Panetta, and NSC staffer Samantha Powers (who once called Hillary a “monster”).

With peers who are competitors and subordinates who can deal directly with the president, Hillary is reduced to announcing foreign aid packages for Pakistan while Holbrooke does the heavy lifting.

Part of Hillary’s problem is the institutional shrinking of the State Department. During the Bush years, while war raged, the Defense Department became more relevant to the conduct of foreign policy. And, under Obama, the financial crisis has propelled the Treasury into the forefront. State, with its emphasis on traditional diplomacy, has been forced to take a back seat. Even though Obama appointed Hillary, he clearly has not been willing to make her a co-president and confines her to the diminished role of her department.

For his part, Bill Clinton has been asked to be a special envoy to Haiti. Yes, Haiti. Obama’s predecessor asked the former president to orchestrate the response to the Asian tsunami and then to Hurricane Katrina. Obama gives him Haiti.

Meanwhile, both Clintons are effectively muzzled and cannot criticize Obama even as he reverses President Clinton’s free market proclivities and budget balancing discipline. Hillary, the supposed friend of Israel, must sit by quietly and watch Iran get the bomb while trying all the while to stop Israel from preventing it.

Bill can’t even make money. Denied the ability to accept speeches from foreign governments or their organs and fenced out of continuing his profitable relationship with the Emir of Dubai, he and his wife must accept the loss of the $13 million they spent on her campaign and sit by passively, unable to earn the money to replace it.

Just as Lincoln buried his rivals Seward, Chase and Stanton in the Cabinet and then on the Supreme Court, and Wilson buried Bryan at the State Department, so Obama has hidden his predecessor and his rival in plain sight at the upper reaches of the government.

How long will Hillary subject herself to this discipline? Likely as long as Obama is popular. Should his ratings fade, she might move away from the president and could even consider a primary contest against him in 2012. But while he is on top of his game, she’ll stay loyal.

But she is shrinking by the day. Once Obama’s equal — and before that his superior — she now looks tiny compared to the president. She doesn’t look like a president in waiting; she’s more like a senior staff member hoping to rise in the bureaucracy. No longer at the head of a movement or the symbol of rising women all over the world, she has faded into the State Department woodwork. She is much less visible than her predecessors Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, James Baker, Madeleine Albright or Condi Rice. She is even less in the public eye than was Al Haig during his one-year tenure. One has to go back to the likes of Warren Christopher or William Rogers to find a secretary of State as far down the totem poll. This diminished status has got to grate on her and on him. But they are trapped in Obama’s web and cannot easily escape.****

"Two months ago, Mrs Clinton answered, straight-faced, with a flat "no" when asked if she would ever run for president again, even adding that "it never crosses my mind".

Well if we learned anything from the Clintons there is nothing they say that can be believed.

*****Home News World News North America USASmart money is on Hillary Clinton for 2016 Hillary Clinton was written off as a failed presidential candidate who would never have another run at the White House. Not any more, writes Toby Harnden in Washington.

Toby Harnden's American Way Published: 6:33PM GMT 19 Dec 2009 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Photo: EPA Driving past the White House the other day, my eye was caught by the bumper sticker on the shiny black Toyota Prius in front of me. It read: "We love you Hillary - Clinton for President, 2016".

A year ago, I'd have snorted at the slogan and kept my distance from the vehicle - judging the driver to be a delusional Clintonite diehard still desperately fighting the reality that the former First Lady's presidential aspirations were history.

Barack Obama makes world believe in politics again, claims top DemocratNow, the person behind that wheel seems to be on the money. Having elected Barack Obama amid near national euphoria, America is experiencing something akin to buyer's remorse.

Obama's popularity is the lowest of any American president at the end of his first year in office since polling began. Yet as his approval ratings have nose-dived, those of his Secretary of State have curved elegantly upwards.

A recent poll by the Clarus Research Group found that Hillary Clinton had a 75 per cent approval rating compared to 51 per cent for the man who defeated her in their epic battle for the Democratic nomination.

These are very early days to handicap 2016 but it's already clear that she has gone from being the supposedly inevitable 2008 nominee who had blown her one big chance as odds-on favourite to be the next Democratic president.

When Mrs Clinton accepted the job of Secretary of State many of her supporters feared she was falling into a trap. Fearing that she could be a rival source of power from Capitol Hill, Obama calculated she would be less of a threat if he brought her inside his tent.

The downsides for the former First Lady were obvious. She would give up her cherished seat as Senator for New York, which gave her an independent power base. Her voice on domestic policy would be silenced.

And her fortunes would inevitably be linked to the man whom she fervently believed was not up to the top job.

It is a sign of Mrs Clinton's astuteness that she said yes and now finds herself ideally placed to succeed Mr Obama or, in the increasingly plausible scenario that he becomes a one-term president, the Republican who ousts him in 2012.

During the past year, Mrs Clinton has done just what she did when she entered the Senate in 2001 - knuckled down to the hard grind of policy while building relationships with wary sceptics.

The woman who was one of the most polarising figures in American politics now has a glowing 65 per cent approval rating among Independents and healthy 57 per cent among Republicans.

Even sworn enemies on the Right marvelled at her toughness in refusing to concede to Obama until the bitter end in the summer of 2008 and now view her as more hawkish than the president.

Mrs Clinton, moreover, has lived in Arkansas and won over conservatives in upstate New York as well as trouncing Obama in states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania - establishing a connection with Middle America that has eluded the president.

Though Obama trumpeted the notion that he was appointing a "team of rivals" to his Cabinet, Mrs Clinton has been instrumental in making his foreign policy team one of the most harmonious in memory by striking up a firm friendship with Robert Gates, the canny Defence Secretary chief held over from the Bush administration.

In the eight administrations Gates has served in, no two Pentagon and State Department heads have been as close. After the poisonous relations between advisers to Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, it is a startling turnaround.

The alliance between Clinton and Gates - who both argued for a robust troop increase from the outset - helped to stiffen Obama's spine over Afghanistan.

Mrs Clinton can afford to be assiduously loyal because her critique of Obama - "a lot of talk, no action" is how she acidly described him in March last year - is already out there and increasingly resonant. She now has unassailable credentials in the one area where she appeared weak in 2008 - foreign policy.

She has been able to stay out of the contentious debates over health care, Wall Street bailouts and the spiraling deficit while her husband, confounding many, has been a low-key apparent model of propriety since she took over at Foggy Bottom.

Two months ago, Mrs Clinton answered, straight-faced, with a flat "no" when asked if she would ever run for president again, even adding that "it never crosses my mind".

Perhaps that patently implausible denial was the surest indication of all that Mrs Clinton is better placed than ever to become America's first female president - and she knows it.

What has Hillary done regarding Russia, Poland/Czech Republic, Nuclear Policy, Iran, Honduras, Afghan Pakistan etc? Nothing. In her defense, her boss asked her not to get involved with foreign policy.

Clintons became masters of delaying the story, not answering, and then they finally confront the questioner as to why they still bring up such old stories. Now stories will only be reported if they are more corrupt than usual(?)

The Obama administration needs to reassure us that donations raised by Bill won't affect rewards paid out by Hillary at taxpayer expense. The template is already written and tested. They can use what ACORN uses to keep taxpayer funds away from partisan activities - the "firewall". Simply impenetrable, like the social security lockbox.

The year is not 2016; someone in 2012 will seriously challenge Obama from within his own party.

After Ronald Reagan said his good-byes to Bonnie Nofziger and hung up the phone, he leaned back and chatted with his aides who had gathered around him. He talked about his favorite room in the White House residence, the Yellow Room, and mentioned the note he had left in the desk drawer for George Bush on a notepad with the printed heading, DON'T LET THE TURKEYS GET YOU DOWN. Someone suggested that the president carve his initials in the Oval Office desk. A chuckle went around the group, and they all felt the bittersweetness of the moment.

Ken Duberstein stepped forward and briefed the president on the schedule for his last day in office--where he was to stand during the inauguration ceremony, when he would board the helicopter that would take him to Andrews Air Force Base for his final flight on Air Force One, when he would give his speech to the well-wishers at Los Angeles International Airport. As Duberstein finished his briefing, the president reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a plain white, plastic-coated card, like an unmarked credit card.

"Well, I guess I won't be needing this anymore," he said, holding the card out in General Powell's direction. "Whom do I give it to?" It was the nuclear authentication code card that Ronald Reagan had carried throughout his presidency. That thin plastic wafer, when inserted into a black leather briefcase carried by a military aide, had the power to unleash Armageddon upon the world. "Just hold on to it, sir," said Jim Kuhn. "You're still the commander in chief. You can turn it in after Mr. Bush is sworn in as president."

Ronald Reagan nodded and placed the card back in his pocket. Then Colin Powell stepped forward and gave the president the most succinct national security breefing of Ronald Reagan's entire presidency. "The world is quiet today, Mr. President," said Powell.

03/02/11 12:51am Roger Friedman 0 Monica Lewinsky–yes, Monica Lewinsky– I saw her last Thursday night in Beverly Hills. She attended the Ed Ruscha art premiere with her brother. And I talked to Monica, and forgot about it entirely until I saw that Terry Richardson somehow got someone that night to take a picture of him with her. It’s on his blog, and I hope it’s okay that I’ve moved it over here. Monica was great, very perky, looking un-aged from her celebrity moment a dozen years ago. I asked her if she was still making handbags. She said no. She also said she was living out in LA. She was very gracious. It was not appropriate to ask about anything else. So well, well, not much of a story. She was excited to check out all of Ruscha’s work, and that was that. Fame is fleeting. A couple of said, “Isn’t that what’s her name?” And no, she didn’t go to any Oscar parties.

I count myself in the front line of those who loath the witch, but with the campaign for the Dem nomination over, I'm guessing the mini-facelifts and face tightening creams because just a pain in the ass. Int's travel over big time zone changes combined with a stressful job have their consequences.

The rock, which weighs less than half an ounce, was brought back to Earth after the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.

It was given to the state of Arkansas more than 30 years ago - then mysteriously disappeared last year.

On Wednesday an archivist sifting through the roughly 2,000 boxes of Clinton materials that are housed in Little Rock, Arkansas, found the missing rock, said Bobby Roberts, who directs the Central Arkansas Library System.

"This morning, one of the processors opened up a box and there's the moon rock, out of nowhere," Mr Roberts said.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette first reported the rock was missing last year. Since then, Mr Roberts said he has been following the news about the moon rock.

"It kind of became Arkansas' mystery about where's the moon rock," he said.

Mr Roberts said he's not sure how the rock ended up among paperwork from when Mr Clinton served as governor, but he said he's glad it has been recovered.

**Amazing the missing things that just happen to turn up around the Clintons. The rock was described as being less than half an ounce, so it's doubtful Bill was rubbing his cigar on it.

Maybe it was next to the missing billing records from Hillary's law firm that appeared in her quarters at the WH after the statute of limitations expired , , , or maybe it travelled with the WH silverware when the Clintons left the WH.

But I digress , , , BTW is there an guestimated market value to that moon rock?

Last week it was reported that the State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were deeply involved in the scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious, or Project Gunwalker. Today, however, new evidence has surfaced indicating that not only was Hillary deeply involved in the scandal but was one of the masterminds behind it.

According to investigative citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh, sources close to the development of the Gunwalker scheme state that early on, Hillary and her trusted associated at State, Andrew J. Shapiro, devised at least part of the framework of what would later become Operation Fast and Furious. It was Shapiro who first described the details of the proposed scheme early in 2009 just after the Obama Administration took office.

Vanderboegh relates the following:

My sources say that as Hillary's trusted subordinate, it was Shapiro who first described to the Secretary of State the details of what has become the Gunwalker Scandal.

The precise extent to which Hillary Clinton's knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Gunwalker Plot, lies within the memories of these two men, Shapiro and Steinberg, sources say.

The sources also express dismay that the Issa committee is apparently restricting itself to the Department of Justice and not venturing further afield. The House Foreign Affairs Committee, they say, needs to summon these two men and their subordinates -- especially at the Mexico Desk at State -- and question them under oath as to what Hillary Clinton knew about the origins of the Gunwalker Scandal and when she knew it.

There is one other thing those sources agree upon. The CIA, they say, knows "everything" about the "Mexican hat dance" that became the Gunwalker Scandal.

The 'Steinberg' mentioned in the quote above is Hillary Clinton's former Deputy Secretary of State, who was appointed directly by Barack Obama and was considered from the start to be an 'Obama man' whose objective was to carry out the wishes of the President in the State Department.

Hillary had said of Steinberg,

Clinton said Steinberg had been a “fixture” at meetings with the National Security Council (NSC) and frequently represented the US State Department at the White House.

That statement is key. Hillary herself stayed out of all meetings dealing with strategy concerning the euphemism the Administration used to designate Gunwalker, 'strategy meetings on Mexico and the problem of drug and gun trafficking.' Hillary's absence would give the impression that she had no connection to the scheme while making sure that her views were represented by Steinberg and Shapiro, both of whom were fully complicit with the details that developed concerning how to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico.

According to sources, Hillary was obsessed with gun statistics that would prove that '90% of the firearms used by Mexican criminals come from the United States.' As previouly reported, that meme, repeated incessantly by Democratic Senators, Barack Obama, certan members of the ATF, Janet Napolitano, and Hillary Clinton was patently and blatantly false. The fact that they all knew it was false is borne out by the lengths to which each of the above named co-conspirators went to attempt to 'prove' that the 90% figure was true.

Again, Vanderboegh relates the following:

My sources say that this battle of the "statistics" was taken very seriously by all players -- the White House, State and Justice. Yet, WHY was this game of statistics so important to the players? If some weapons from the American civilian market were making it to Mexico into the hand of drug gang killers that was bad enough. What was the importance of insisting that it was 90 percent, 80 percent, or finally 70 percent? Would such statistics make any difference to the law enforcement tactics necessary to curtail them? No.

This statistics mania is similar to the focus on "body counts" in Vietnam. Yet if Vietnam body counts were supposed to be a measure of how we were winning that war, the focus on the 90 percent meme was certainly not designed to be a measure of how we were winning the war against arming the cartels, but rather by what overwhelming standard we were LOSING. Why?

Recall what the whistleblower ATF agents told us right after this scandal broke in the wake of the death of Brian Terry: "ATF source confirms ‘walking’ guns to Mexico to ‘pad’ statistics."

Thus, from the beginning the scheme was to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico in order to be in a strengthened position to call for gun bans and strict gun control at a time when it was politically unpopular. Further, the scheme would involve a made-up statistic, out of thin air--90%--which then had to be proved by using civilian gun retailers along the southern border as unsuspecting pawns to walk U.S. guns into Mexico by ATF agents, straw purchasers, and others with connections to Mexican drug cartels.

And the evidence points to the fact that Hillary Clinton was one of the original Administration officials who was 'in the loop' on the scheme from the very beginning.

a modern economy requires a government that is *smart* Obviously this is the new push for a return to the Clintons from the liberals. Government is not the problem - aka the Tea Party's claim - what we need is a "smarter" government. And who better to see that government is smarter than the beloved Clintons. Remember the cover of TIME magazine with something about Hillary Clinton and "smart" foreing policy. There is NO doubt she will run for President again. When I don't know. If VP slot with the Brockster? I don't know. If not than in 2016.

This is the new con. "Good and smart" government. I recall Soros also has spoken about "good" government. There really is no hope in stopping this relentless push for government to control everything we do. They use voter bribery (entitlements) to buy people with this ideology. I really think there is no hope.

..DURING the 2008 presidential election Bill Clinton’s reputation took a battering. Democrats who had stuck with him through all the bimbo eruptions and political zigzags suddenly started accusing him of racism (in South Carolina) and boorishness (almost everywhere). This owed something to the press which had all but degenerated into an ahmen chorus to the Obama operation. But it owed more to a general sense of exhaustion with the former first family: few people wanted to see Bill become Putin to Hillary’s Medvedev.

How the mood has changed! The comeback kid is back with a vengeance. From September 30th to October 1st he celebrates the 20th anniversary of his announced run for the presidency in Little Rock, Arkansas. In November Knopf is publishing a new book, “Back to Work”, his second literary offering after his sprawling autobiography. And the press is primed for a love-fest. The further Barack Obama’s stock has fallen—and it has fallen a long way—the more Mr Clinton’s has risen. And the worse the global economic crisis becomes—and it is becoming very bad indeed—the more people hanker after the stable growth of the 1990s.

Unlike Mr Obama, who seems most at home with campus liberals and minority activists, Mr Clinton knew how to reach white middle America—those poor boobs who ostensibly cling to guns and God. Mr Obama knows only two registers—grand (and increasingly tedious) rhetoric and cold cerebration. Mr Clinton can feel people’s pain—can drape a hand over people’s shoulders and convince them that they are the centre of his universe. He does Oprah better than Oprah and Dr Phil better than Dr Phil. But "Back to Work" reminds us that there is an even more important reason why we should miss the old rogue: he may have been undisciplined, self-indulgent and sleazy, but he was one of the greatest policy wonks ever to sit in the White House.

One of the most surprising things about Mr Obama’s presidency—even more surprising than his appetite for golf—is his lack of interest in the nitty-gritty of policy. Mr Clinton brought the same appetite to social policy that he did to junk food and cheap women. He loved debating the finer points with the likes of Robert Reich and Lawrence Summers. As a New Democrat, he understood that liberalism needed to reinvent itself if it was to remain relevant in an age of globalisation and information technology (though his interest in IT did not extend to teaching himself how to use a computer). As a former governor, he understood that the devil of policy-making lies in the details.

In his new book “Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President”, Ron Suskind quotes Mr Obama claiming that “Carter, Clinton and I all have sort of the disease of being policy wonks”. But in truth Mr Obama is surprisingly free from the disease, given his Ivy League education and cerebral style: he has never wrestled with public policy for any sustained period of time; never once gone to battle with his party’s interest groups in defence of a new liberalism, for example; never descended into the engine room of the policy machine.

Mr Obama’s supporters might retort that he inherited a far more difficult set of problems than Mr Clinton: the biggest economic implosion since the Great Depression, a huge mountain of debt, much of it accumulated by his spendthrift predecessor, and two interminable wars. But he also had huge resources at his disposal in his first two years: a solid electoral majority, Democratic majorities in both houses and a whirlwind of goodwill as the first African-American president. This could have produced health-care legislation that dealt seriously with costs and educational reforms that extended choice and competition. But instead Mr Obama handed over the detail of health-care reform to Congressional Democrats (who gutted any cost-cutting) and retreated before the teachers’ unions. Mr Obama’s supporters might also retort that after those two golden years, he was confronted by a resurgent Republican majority in the House. But divided politics can be a stimulus to creative policy making: Mr Clinton’s battles with Newt Gingrich’s Republicans led to one of his singular pieces of legislation, welfare reform.

“Back to Work” addresses the subject Mr Obama has been weakest with: job creation. Mr Clinton sounds some classic themes from the 1990s with a bit of fashionable greenery flown in. The private and public sector should be partners, not antagonists: anti-government rhetoric may be good for politics (and TV ratings) but it is bad for policy-making. A modern economy requires a government that is active but smart rather than one that is active but driven by vested interests. But the blurb also promises some “specific recommendations” on how to put people back to work and create new businesses—and even double America’s exports. It is impossible to judge whether this is just flannel or serious argument until the book is released next month. It is also far easier to make recommendations from the comfort of retirement than it is to govern. But a president who presided over America’s Indian summer—a period of sustained growth and disciplined government—should at least have something to say to a new generation of politicians who live in a far stormier time.***